Unheard Melodies presents a straightforward but unusual guide to musical appreciation, and is of particular help to the non-specialist in coming to terms with the complexities of classical music. The raw materials, styles and processes of music are introduced and explained, together with inside information about instruments and the lives of composers, not to mention the many hidden puzzles and ciphers accessible to those with the necessary key. A must for anyone interested in understanding the real substance of music. There is a world of unheard melodies out there for the hearing, so why not make a fascinating journey into less familiar musical byways and discover new ways of listening to the music you thought you knew.

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Synopsis

Unheard Melodies presents a straightforward but unusual guide to musical appreciation, and is of particular help to the non-specialist in coming to terms with the complexities of classical music. The raw materials, styles and processes of music are introduced and explained, together with inside information about instruments and the lives of composers, not to mention the many hidden puzzles and ciphers accessible to those with the necessary key. A must for anyone interested in understanding the real substance of music. There is a world of unheard melodies out there for the hearing, so why not make a fascinating journey into less familiar musical byways and discover new ways of listening to the music you thought you knew.

This enlightened 'insider' tour of the workings of composition, of the instruments of the orchestra and of the science of music answers a great need long felt by the enthusiastic but untutored music lover. As Paul Drayton points out "Enjoying music is easy. Understanding it is harder". With an ultra light touch, disguising the erudition and experience of an accomplished composer, conductor and performer, he takes us into the hidden world of music where the operation of harmony can be represented in an immediately comprehensible diagram, where instruments occasionally take control of what a composer can write and where the vagaries of musical directions can become a code, a joke or an anagram. This book is delightfully levened with intriguing, witty and sometimes irreverent anecdotes from the lives of past and present composers and performers, and the reader can be invited to compare the sounds and rhythms of high music with those of poetry or of machinery. I did not expect to laugh out loud, but I did so more than once! Music suddenly does more than wash over us as a sensual delight and becomes at the same time an exhilarating exercise of the mind. A must for anyone yearning to get further into the operation of music both in itself and on our minds and souls.